from the yet-some-people-are-still-worrying-about-CD-sales-for-chrissakes dept

One of the points we often try to make at Techdirt is that the effects of disruptive technologies are going to be felt far beyond the entertainment and publishing industries—they are not limited to the online world. The internet creates abundance of information, but it also creates a push towards decentralization in all things, and that's one of the big ways it intersects with the physical: although you can't download a car, you can create whole new systems for buying, selling, renting, reviewing and maintaining cars, and those systems will replace established but less-efficient ones.

Nobody is immune—not even the last disruptor. Companies like Zipcar changed the game with their car-sharing services, but they are already facing new challengers. RelayRides, launching nationally this week, has a model that takes things one step further:

While those companies own fleets of cars, RelayRides is entirely peer-to-peer — if you have a car, then you can make it available for rental when you're not using it. RelayRides says the average car owner makes $250 a month from the program.

Since it takes advantage of the cars already on the road, founder and chief community officer Shelby Clark argues that peer-to-peer carsharing can have a big impact—after all, a fleet-based company couldn't simply declare one day that it's launching nationally.

That's especially true in non-urban areas. For example, Zipcar doesn't have any cars available in the Los Angeles suburb where I grew up, and it's hard to imagine that establishing a fleet there would make economic sense anytime soon.

How big and how successful this approach will become remains to be seen, but it's a creative idea that makes a clear point: disruption can happen anywhere, to anyone. As the entertainment industry continues to fight progress, experts from every side of the debate love to make profound-sounding statements about how the internet has changed our media consumption habits, but that's old news. From mobile-based taxi & limo services to the coming era of 3D printers and things like the Pirate Bay's Physibles site, digital technologies are disrupting a lot of things, not just media. Governments and industries cannot continue getting bogged down in tiresome debates about saving obsolete business models—not if they want to have any hope of embracing the opportunities, and solving the potential problems, of a fast-approaching future.

from the join-in dept

Last week, over on our Step 2 discussion platform we kicked off a discussion on what an "innovation agenda" might look like for a US-politician for 2012. What kinds of regulatory changes should they be focused on? This effort, done in partnership with Engine Advocacy, has already kicked off a nice discussion over there with some interesting ideas being tossed around. If you haven't yet, please join in the discussion. I'm not surprised that copyright issues and open internet issues top the list of things most interesting to folks -- the SOPA/PIPA debate has pretty much guaranteed that. I am a little surprised that issues around helping skilled entrepreneurs -- the folks who create jobs -- was seen as less of an issue compared to some of the others on the list. Either way, the discussion is still going on there, and we'll be taking it further over the coming weeks and months, so feel free to join in.

Because of their low-cost and small size they can then be shipped to activists and NGO's in areas where free-speech is difficult.

"This is especially useful for activist organizations, human rights organizations, any group composed of a few dozen people who need to have an internal secure communication service," said Mr Kobeissi.

Small, portable Raspberry Pi computers set up to run Cryptocat, he believes, may be a quick way to build such a service.

An interesting consequence of Moore's Law and the ready availability of free software is that powerful computers can now be produced for just tens of dollars, and in an extremely small package. The low cost means that organizations supporting activists can send in many such systems to countries with human rights problems, and replace them if they are discovered and confiscated or destroyed. The size makes it much easier to import them discreetly, as well as to conceal them in countries that try to keep computing under tight control.

And it's not just the Raspberry Pi that will be making this possible. Its high-profile success is likely to mean that in due course other systems will be produced that are cheaper and smaller. That will ensure they are even more popular with the educational market and hackers -- and even more problematic for oppressive regimes.